Abundance of Pangolins in Southern Campo Ma’an National Park, South Region, Cameroon

Giant pangolin (Smutsia gigantea) and white-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tricuspis) are all classified as “Endangered”, while black-bellied pangolin (Phataginus tetradactyla) is classified as “Vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List of threatened species. All their populations are decreasing rampantly due to hunting, habitat degradation and illegal trade of their scales from Africa to Asia. This research was carried out to determine their abundance in Campo Ma’an National Park (CMNP) and to investigate the effect of human activities on their distribution. We used camera trapping techniques to confirm their presence in the study area, then reconnaissance and line transects methods to collect direct and indirect pangolin indices after which the encounter rates (ER) were calculated. We recorded 28 active sleeping burrows of pangolins in the study area. The Relative abundance index was 0.3 pangolins per 100days of camera trapping effort. The ER of sleeping burrows stood at 1.2 signs/km (n=51). Hunting was the only human activity recorded with an ER of 0.8sign/km. The Pearsian correlation test revealed a negative correlation between pangolin and human signs with a coefficient of determination of 0.001 indicating a low anthropogenic influence on pangolin distribution in southern CMNP. The one-way anova test showed no significant difference on the impact of human activities on pangolin distribution between and within forest types. The probability of encountering a pangolin burrow increased with increase in Euclidian distance from park interior to nearest road and village. This study will serve to provide baseline information on pangolins and to boost conservation efforts in CMNP.

Key words: Abundance, Cameroon, Encounter Rate, Local Pangolin Species, Line Transects Technique.